Touchdown (Quinn/Rachel)
Name: Touchdown
Rating: PG
Length: 1600
Spoilers: Journey
Summary: Quinn and Rachel are both closet Madden geeks and begin a rivalry against each other. After one heated game they both find out who they really are and then they duke it out to see who wins.
Author's Note: Cassie shouldn't hang out in fluff memes. Prompt Here! And this might not make sense if you don't understand football. But it should. AND ALSO. I don't play Madden online, so I just made stuff up. It seemed right-ish. So don't tell me if I'm wrong. Appropriate icon is appropriate.
The best part about moving into Mercedes' house was the PS3 her brother left behind.
And bacon.
But mostly the PS3. It was an older one, but her brother had Call of Duty, and Gran Turismo, and best of all, Madden.
Quinn had picked up a lot about the game of football over her years of cheerleading and living with Finn and then with Puck. And she was pretty sure she was damn good at it, especially when she kept kicking everyone's ass in the game.
The decision to move into the online world was easy. Finn had signed on many a time right in front of her, and she was aching for some good competition. She felt very violent, ramming her small little helmeted men into other small little helmeted men and feeling the satisfying rumble coming through the controller. It was awesome.
And she was good, too. Plenty of people fell to her skilled group of little helmeted men, the Bengals, even when they were supposedly superior teams. Quinn didn't know that much about NFL football, but she was pretty sure the Saints weren't supposed to lose to the Bengals one hundred and forty-two to seven. It had been a satisfying victory.
One day, she entered into a game with someone functioning under the name GoldStar94. They didn't have their audio option turned on, and so they didn't hear the long string of curse words Quinn had for the lowly Browns when they ran back the opening kickoff. That was probably fortunate, because her little helmeted men kept whiffing tackles, and dropping balls, and GoldStar94, the stupid evil person that they were, kept scoring touchdowns.
By halftime, Quinn's Bengals were down, 49 - 21, and she hated it. But she wasn't going to stop fighting, because her pride was too swollen, just like her egregiously large belly.
And she lost. She, Quinn Fabray, the well-known Baconator online, lost. She lost to someone using the Browns. She lost to GoldfuckingStar94, and the hole in Mercedes' wall was not her fault. The controller had just spontaneously flown from her hand.
After the game was over and Quinn had pulled the controller from the wall, a message popped up on the screen. It was from GoldStar, saying, "Thank you for a wonderful game, Baconator. I hope to do battle with you another day."
It was also not Quinn's fault that the controller broke into several pieces when it spontaneously flew into the ground.
//
Two weeks later, and Quinn's life had devolved. She was reasonably depressed, now that Beth had been born and handed off, and even though New Directions had won at Regionals, she had no interest in school. She did, however, have an interest in bacon, still, and that was good.
She had been working on a custom playbook for Madden in those two weeks, re-working the way she played the game so she could be ready to challenge GoldStar and crush him with her little helmeted band of Bengals. It was a completely healthy obsession, Quinn was sure, even when Mercedes tried to coax her away from her new playbook (entitled: VICTORY) and Quinn had narrowly missed the girl's head with her brand-new heavy duty controller.
After endlessly running through her plays for days, she finally believed herself ready. She went through the online players list, and challenged GoldStar94 to a game.
The teams were still the same. But Quinn found that everything was entirely different. GoldStar had changed their entire playbook - it was now a run-heavy offense and featured a highly aggressive defense. And Quinn had planned for the opposite on both sides of the ball.
Needless to say, the damage that her game controller and her bedside lamp sustained was not her fault.
//
The second playbook Quinn developed was entitled Annihilation.
Her little helmeted men - still the Bengals - ran a much more balanced approach to the game, and it was efficient and mechanical. It didn't win the games with the effectiveness of her old playbooks - but it won them with practiced ease and with little resistance from the opposing team.
Her battle with GoldStar94 went much better. They were neck-and-neck for most of it, and every time GoldStar switched tactics, Quinn was ready for them.
Unfortunately, Quinn was distracted by the smell of bacon wafting through the house in the last minute of the game and allowed a huge play to occur, setting up GoldStar's last-minute field goal that sailed right through the uprights. The score was twenty-four to twenty-seven.
The therapy that Mercedes' mother had to endure after Quinn was through with her was not Quinn's fault, and neither was the small dent of the linoleum of the kitchen from where Quinn's controller spontaneously (once again) flew from her hands and broke into multiple pieces.
//
The third playbook Quinn developed was named Supernova, because a supernova was the death of a star. Quinn learned this in Astronomy, in between the scribbling of football formations and plays all over her worksheets.
She thought it was pretty damn clever.
It featured numerous trick plays and blitzes, last-ditch plays that Quinn would have never used in a normal game. But she was preparing for no normal game. Her little helmeted band of men would crash into her opponents with such fierceness that the middle-aged men she played against would complain or quit because she kept knocking their quarterbacks out. She was certain she was ready.
She challenged GoldStar94 once more, and this time, she came away victorious, thirty-six to seventeen. There was no, "I hope to do battle again with you, Baconator," afterwards. Only the sweet smell of victory. And bacon.
Quinn was flushed with victory the next day, but she was not so deliriously happy that she missed her ex-boyfriend Finn fawning over Rachel Berry, who had bruises all along her tiny right fist, and splints on her pinky and middle fingers.
But she was deliriously happy enough not to consider what that meant.
//
Rachel explained it anyway.
She had punched a wall.
Except, she said, "I punched a wall in a momentary break in character from my pacifist ways. I hope never to do battle with my home's drywall again," and she smiled and laughed, and everyone laughed.
Except Quinn.
//
She challenged GoldStar94 that night, and beat them to a pulp, fifty-six to seventeen. She sent them a message at the end of the game.
"Don't stop believing."
//
The next day in glee, Rachel's right hand was entirely bruised, but she stared suspiciously around the room, until Quinn raised her hand and waved at the girl.
Rachel's eyes narrowed immediately, tracing along Quinn as if the secret to Quinn's waving would be revealed. It evoked a familiar hot sensation along Quinn's spine, and Quinn's smile dropped a little as she recognized it.
Rachel waited until afterwards and stopped Quinn at the door, a question in her eyes.
"GoldStar94?" Quinn asked, and Rachel's face registered surprise before she glanced down to the absence of a baby bump at Quinn's middle, raising her eyes up slowly.
"Baconator."
//
The stage was set. After a serious discussion over who had home team, it was decided Rachel would have her Browns in their home of Cleveland Browns Stadium because Quinn had reality's home turf, namely: her room at Mercedes' house.
They both had their memory cards in, and it was with distrust that Quinn loaded her playbook, Supernova, watching Rachel fiddle with her own special controller as the smaller girl loaded her own playbook, which was named The Eradication of Bacon.
Quinn selected her usual band of little helmeted Bengal men and watched in silence as Rachel flicked through her choices and landed on the disgusting and vibrant orange of the Browns.
They played in a tense silence, sitting right next to each other at the end of Quinn's bed. Mercedes attempted to enter the room only to be growled at by Rachel, who was in the middle of running away from Quinn's swarming defenders.
At halftime, it was a tie. They took a five minute break during which Rachel went into Mercedes' backyard to 'take a breather,' and Quinn watched as the girl kicked at the ground several times, quite adorably.
They remained silent when the game resumed, and it wasn't until the fourth quarter that Quinn became distracted. Rachel uncurled her legs from beneath her, and draped them over the edge of the bed, kicking back and forth lightly as she ferociously tackled one of Quinn's little helmeted men, and Quinn caught the smile at the violent rumble that shook through both of their controllers.
At two minute warning, they were tied, and Quinn was entranced.
The way Rachel's muscles moved under her tan skin as she kicked back and forth, the way she smelled sweet, the way her forehead would crinkle when Quinn would call another blitz and send too many men for Rachel's small lineman to handle.
At thirty seconds, Rachel had the ball.
And at twenty-nine seconds, Quinn looked away from the game and locked onto the sight of Rachel's pink tongue, sticking out of her mouth as she frowned in concentration on the game.
At twenty-three seconds, Rachel completed a Hail Mary pass to a receiver standing at the forty-nine yard line. Quinn's little helmeted Bengal missed the tackle as Quinn leaned ever closer to Rachel.
At nineteen seconds, Rachel's little helmeted Brown suddenly peeled off the field, into the sideline, with no one near him. Her thumb had suddenly gone sideways due to her surprise at Quinn's lips suddenly on her own.
The game was never finished, but Quinn would call her night a victory anyway.
Rating: PG
Length: 1600
Spoilers: Journey
Summary: Quinn and Rachel are both closet Madden geeks and begin a rivalry against each other. After one heated game they both find out who they really are and then they duke it out to see who wins.
Author's Note: Cassie shouldn't hang out in fluff memes. Prompt Here! And this might not make sense if you don't understand football. But it should. AND ALSO. I don't play Madden online, so I just made stuff up. It seemed right-ish. So don't tell me if I'm wrong. Appropriate icon is appropriate.
The best part about moving into Mercedes' house was the PS3 her brother left behind.
And bacon.
But mostly the PS3. It was an older one, but her brother had Call of Duty, and Gran Turismo, and best of all, Madden.
Quinn had picked up a lot about the game of football over her years of cheerleading and living with Finn and then with Puck. And she was pretty sure she was damn good at it, especially when she kept kicking everyone's ass in the game.
The decision to move into the online world was easy. Finn had signed on many a time right in front of her, and she was aching for some good competition. She felt very violent, ramming her small little helmeted men into other small little helmeted men and feeling the satisfying rumble coming through the controller. It was awesome.
And she was good, too. Plenty of people fell to her skilled group of little helmeted men, the Bengals, even when they were supposedly superior teams. Quinn didn't know that much about NFL football, but she was pretty sure the Saints weren't supposed to lose to the Bengals one hundred and forty-two to seven. It had been a satisfying victory.
One day, she entered into a game with someone functioning under the name GoldStar94. They didn't have their audio option turned on, and so they didn't hear the long string of curse words Quinn had for the lowly Browns when they ran back the opening kickoff. That was probably fortunate, because her little helmeted men kept whiffing tackles, and dropping balls, and GoldStar94, the stupid evil person that they were, kept scoring touchdowns.
By halftime, Quinn's Bengals were down, 49 - 21, and she hated it. But she wasn't going to stop fighting, because her pride was too swollen, just like her egregiously large belly.
And she lost. She, Quinn Fabray, the well-known Baconator online, lost. She lost to someone using the Browns. She lost to GoldfuckingStar94, and the hole in Mercedes' wall was not her fault. The controller had just spontaneously flown from her hand.
After the game was over and Quinn had pulled the controller from the wall, a message popped up on the screen. It was from GoldStar, saying, "Thank you for a wonderful game, Baconator. I hope to do battle with you another day."
It was also not Quinn's fault that the controller broke into several pieces when it spontaneously flew into the ground.
//
Two weeks later, and Quinn's life had devolved. She was reasonably depressed, now that Beth had been born and handed off, and even though New Directions had won at Regionals, she had no interest in school. She did, however, have an interest in bacon, still, and that was good.
She had been working on a custom playbook for Madden in those two weeks, re-working the way she played the game so she could be ready to challenge GoldStar and crush him with her little helmeted band of Bengals. It was a completely healthy obsession, Quinn was sure, even when Mercedes tried to coax her away from her new playbook (entitled: VICTORY) and Quinn had narrowly missed the girl's head with her brand-new heavy duty controller.
After endlessly running through her plays for days, she finally believed herself ready. She went through the online players list, and challenged GoldStar94 to a game.
The teams were still the same. But Quinn found that everything was entirely different. GoldStar had changed their entire playbook - it was now a run-heavy offense and featured a highly aggressive defense. And Quinn had planned for the opposite on both sides of the ball.
Needless to say, the damage that her game controller and her bedside lamp sustained was not her fault.
//
The second playbook Quinn developed was entitled Annihilation.
Her little helmeted men - still the Bengals - ran a much more balanced approach to the game, and it was efficient and mechanical. It didn't win the games with the effectiveness of her old playbooks - but it won them with practiced ease and with little resistance from the opposing team.
Her battle with GoldStar94 went much better. They were neck-and-neck for most of it, and every time GoldStar switched tactics, Quinn was ready for them.
Unfortunately, Quinn was distracted by the smell of bacon wafting through the house in the last minute of the game and allowed a huge play to occur, setting up GoldStar's last-minute field goal that sailed right through the uprights. The score was twenty-four to twenty-seven.
The therapy that Mercedes' mother had to endure after Quinn was through with her was not Quinn's fault, and neither was the small dent of the linoleum of the kitchen from where Quinn's controller spontaneously (once again) flew from her hands and broke into multiple pieces.
//
The third playbook Quinn developed was named Supernova, because a supernova was the death of a star. Quinn learned this in Astronomy, in between the scribbling of football formations and plays all over her worksheets.
She thought it was pretty damn clever.
It featured numerous trick plays and blitzes, last-ditch plays that Quinn would have never used in a normal game. But she was preparing for no normal game. Her little helmeted band of men would crash into her opponents with such fierceness that the middle-aged men she played against would complain or quit because she kept knocking their quarterbacks out. She was certain she was ready.
She challenged GoldStar94 once more, and this time, she came away victorious, thirty-six to seventeen. There was no, "I hope to do battle again with you, Baconator," afterwards. Only the sweet smell of victory. And bacon.
Quinn was flushed with victory the next day, but she was not so deliriously happy that she missed her ex-boyfriend Finn fawning over Rachel Berry, who had bruises all along her tiny right fist, and splints on her pinky and middle fingers.
But she was deliriously happy enough not to consider what that meant.
//
Rachel explained it anyway.
She had punched a wall.
Except, she said, "I punched a wall in a momentary break in character from my pacifist ways. I hope never to do battle with my home's drywall again," and she smiled and laughed, and everyone laughed.
Except Quinn.
//
She challenged GoldStar94 that night, and beat them to a pulp, fifty-six to seventeen. She sent them a message at the end of the game.
"Don't stop believing."
//
The next day in glee, Rachel's right hand was entirely bruised, but she stared suspiciously around the room, until Quinn raised her hand and waved at the girl.
Rachel's eyes narrowed immediately, tracing along Quinn as if the secret to Quinn's waving would be revealed. It evoked a familiar hot sensation along Quinn's spine, and Quinn's smile dropped a little as she recognized it.
Rachel waited until afterwards and stopped Quinn at the door, a question in her eyes.
"GoldStar94?" Quinn asked, and Rachel's face registered surprise before she glanced down to the absence of a baby bump at Quinn's middle, raising her eyes up slowly.
"Baconator."
//
The stage was set. After a serious discussion over who had home team, it was decided Rachel would have her Browns in their home of Cleveland Browns Stadium because Quinn had reality's home turf, namely: her room at Mercedes' house.
They both had their memory cards in, and it was with distrust that Quinn loaded her playbook, Supernova, watching Rachel fiddle with her own special controller as the smaller girl loaded her own playbook, which was named The Eradication of Bacon.
Quinn selected her usual band of little helmeted Bengal men and watched in silence as Rachel flicked through her choices and landed on the disgusting and vibrant orange of the Browns.
They played in a tense silence, sitting right next to each other at the end of Quinn's bed. Mercedes attempted to enter the room only to be growled at by Rachel, who was in the middle of running away from Quinn's swarming defenders.
At halftime, it was a tie. They took a five minute break during which Rachel went into Mercedes' backyard to 'take a breather,' and Quinn watched as the girl kicked at the ground several times, quite adorably.
They remained silent when the game resumed, and it wasn't until the fourth quarter that Quinn became distracted. Rachel uncurled her legs from beneath her, and draped them over the edge of the bed, kicking back and forth lightly as she ferociously tackled one of Quinn's little helmeted men, and Quinn caught the smile at the violent rumble that shook through both of their controllers.
At two minute warning, they were tied, and Quinn was entranced.
The way Rachel's muscles moved under her tan skin as she kicked back and forth, the way she smelled sweet, the way her forehead would crinkle when Quinn would call another blitz and send too many men for Rachel's small lineman to handle.
At thirty seconds, Rachel had the ball.
And at twenty-nine seconds, Quinn looked away from the game and locked onto the sight of Rachel's pink tongue, sticking out of her mouth as she frowned in concentration on the game.
At twenty-three seconds, Rachel completed a Hail Mary pass to a receiver standing at the forty-nine yard line. Quinn's little helmeted Bengal missed the tackle as Quinn leaned ever closer to Rachel.
At nineteen seconds, Rachel's little helmeted Brown suddenly peeled off the field, into the sideline, with no one near him. Her thumb had suddenly gone sideways due to her surprise at Quinn's lips suddenly on her own.
The game was never finished, but Quinn would call her night a victory anyway.